Judge Not

Of course Christians should fight for justice. But it's repentance, not judgment, that truly defines us.

The discussion in the wake of my Fourth of July column has been invigorating, and it is moving to see the high pitch of idealism on every side. There are things I wish I'd said more clearly, and side topics I wish I'd had room to address, but limited space demands selectivity.

To recap, Beliefnet members felt that in dismissing political freedom as a requirement for an active faith life, my column advocated pacifism--even in the face of tyranny. "Quietism is not a biblical value," responded member tawonda. "Shame on you for helping legitimate oppressive systems," scolded member ChrisX.

The thing that struck me most, however, was the amount of sheer confusion. Posts shot off in wildly different directions, as if there was no consensus about what the topic of conversation was. I think the source of the trouble is that our culture holds two deeply ingrained ideas, which in theory sound fine together but in practice conflict sharply. When that happens, uproar follows.

The first ingrained idea is that we should be tolerant and nonjudgmental and live-and-let-live. The second is that we should fight zealously for justice. But doing justice requires being judgmental. The first step is sizing someone up and deciding he's a racist, a baby-killer, or wearing fur. How can you evaluate somebody but not judge?

That's confusing enough, but Christians have a yet higher hurdle: They're called not to merely tolerate opponents, but love them. How can we love our enemies, and not judge them, yet still try to stop the wrong they do?

Historically, of course, the tendency has been to choose one extreme or the other: either slaughter the infidels, or piously, passively withdraw from life. Justification for just about anything can be dug out of Scripture. So I think it's wise to read Scripture in the context of the early Christian community; they wrote it, they lived in that culture, and spoke those languages. What did they think Jesus meant? How did they live it out?

The early Bible commentaries and sermons, the stories of martyrs and desert fathers and mothers, keep returning to a basic theme we have lost today. One central principle guided everything they did and enabled them to keep justice and nonjudgment in balance. It was humility. Or, unpacking that word, it was living at the balance point of repentance and forgiveness, where humility can bloom in the security of God's love.

We don't like the word "repentance." Even conservative Christians find it embarrassing, as it prompts images of crazed revival-tent evangelists and pathological self-loathing. But this is a distorted understanding. For the early church, repentance was the wellspring of joy and healing. As Jesus taught, the one who knows she has been forgiven much knows she is loved much and can pour out love in return. Repentance and joy go together and send us back into the world able to love beyond our cramped natural capacity. We can work self-sacrificially for the good, kind to those who oppose us, humbly aware of our own failings, no longer anxious to be thought perfect.

You might be wondering why I went off on a tangent about irrelevant religious stuff when I was talking about something important, namely justice. But that's the point: Because we are fallen humans, if we don't have humility or a sense of our need for forgiveness, our zeal to do justice can easily flip over into tyranny. We don't see the tipping point; we become inflated with our cause, full of self-congratulation and self-righteousness, and run right over the edge. The oppressed of one generation become the oppressors of the next, and now those powerless must rise up, thinking themselves similarly noble. This kind of see-saw can go on for centuries, and everyone claims to be fighting for justice.

Jesus offered a very different approach. He taught that we should refuse to seek vengeance and instead forgive those who hurt us. If we don't forgive, he promised, God won't forgive us. Much of the wrongdoing we see can be passed over in silence if it doesn't hurt others overtly. We can hold up a universal standard of goodness, and do our best to live by it, and ask forgiveness from God and others when we don't.

In most cases, there is no need to call attention to another individual's wrongdoing, but when intervention is required, humility is still the rule. Even while pursuing justice, we should think, "I am no better than he," or "I could do the same thing." Though we recognize when someone has violated the common standard, we don't sit in the Judge's seat. There is one who will judge on the last day, and till then we linger in the courtroom as the friend of the accused, hoping he will come to the repentance which has set us free.

This is far from the kind of detachment that is passive or cool. It is mercy, something active and seeking. St. Isaac of Nineveh (seventh century) wrote: "And what is a merciful heart? It is the heart's burning for all of creation, for men, for birds, for animals and even for demons. At the remembrance and at the sight of them, the merciful man's eyes fill with tears which arise from the great compassion that urges his heart. It grows tender and cannot endure hearing or seeing any injury or slight sorrow to anything in creation. Because of this, such a man continually offers tearful prayer even for irrational animals and for the enemies of truth and for all who harm it, that they may be guarded and forgiven."

It would be anachronistic to ask whether the early Christians defended human rights; the very concept wouldn't appear for almost 1,800 years. For them, the stunning news was the possibility of reconciliation with God through Christ. In our Western culture, we are inoculated against those words, and it's news that now bores us. But it was unimaginably exciting at the time and has been through the centuries for those to whom it breaks through.